Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

While infographics like this are interesting, they are somewhat misleading because they only list the top public companies. The list would surely be different if it listed the 100 most profitable public, private & government owned companies. Arabian oil companies would no doubt he in the top 100, along with a few weapons manufacturers. Unfortunately, such information is not available or is very hard to find. I presume that the reason American companies top the list at over 50% is not because they are the most profitable, but because America is a bastion of free trade and it is very common for a company to be traded on an exchange. A lot of companies in Russia, Eastern Europe, China and other less developed parts of the world are not even on the radar screen of investors.
Just my $0.02

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BR: Not that Bloomberg would make the top 10, but I’d bet they’d make the top 100

To provide perspective, they should have shown percentages of Net Income as a percentage Total Revenue/Sales for each company and shown separate rankings for some of the largest companies based on these percentages.

My guess is that most of the companies included in the above graphics have Net Income percentages between 3% and 8%.

Or… With ExxonMobil’s profits from last year alone they could… generate returns for the shareholders who risked their capital in a business linked to a volatile commodity price affording people around the world mobility, heat and helpful chemicals and plastics. But why point out that stuff?

Also, these companies have the biggest absolute profit numbers, but aren’t those with the highest profitability. The anti-profit types have grabbed the artificial moral high ground and exploit it beautifully. I love the assumption that ExxonMobil “could” give away all of that money. What if they did? We’d be walking to work real quick.

Clay: Profit margins depend on the capital investments needed. Industrial companies have high capital costs which drag down margins; companies like MSFT that don’t sell hardware or have to invest heavily in equipment have an advantage there.

software companies always have better margins. they should too.other than some hardware, the production of their product is actually pretty simple. a lot of them will have very large profit margins (+30) but they also get them selves into trouble really easily. they do have a large server farm, just not as big as Google maybe.

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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